4 Arizona Valley cities ranked as least greenest cities in the US, per WalletHub
Oct 10, 2021, 7:00 AM | Updated: 8:13 am
Shade and trees in Gilbert, Ariz., on Aug. 5, 2021. Gilbert Parks and Recreation officials held an open-house meeting for residents in August to collect feedback on shade needs for future planning. (Facebook Photo/Gilbert Parks and Recreation)
(Facebook Photo/Gilbert Parks and Recreation)
PHOENIX — Four cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area were ranked as the least greenest cities in the United States, according to a personal finance website.
WalletHub compared the 100 largest cities across 28 key “green” indicators, evaluating four categories, which include environment, transportation, energy sources, and lifestyle and policy.
Chandler, Mesa, Gilbert and Glendale had the worst conditions in the environmental category which covered areas such as the urban heat island effect, amount of green space, numbers of parks, as well as water and air quality.
Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the greenest practices and policies.
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The cities fared slightly better in the transportation, energy sources, and lifestyle and policy categories, but still scored in the bottom half of the rankings.
Those categories evaluated various metrics, which include the mileage of bicycle lanes, intersection density, number of smart-energy policies and initiatives, farmers markets and community-support agriculture programs, “green” job opportunities and presence of plastic bag bans.
Due to the absence of comparable city-level data, metrics that measure the availability of recycling programs or the amount of waste recycled in each city weren’t included in the report.
Scottsdale (No. 66) and Phoenix (No. 82) ranked slightly higher than the four Valley cities, with Scottsdale’s best rankings placed in transportation and lifestyle and policy (No. 54) and it’s worst in energy sources (No. 73).
San Diego (No. 1) and San Francisco (No. 2) were considered to be the greenest cities in America, with San Diego scoring best in the environment and energy sources category and San Francisco scoring best in transportation and lifestyle and policy.
Researchers collected data from over 20 sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Energy — the Alternative Fuels Data Center, TripAdvisor, Indeed and Yelp.
